Step 1. Obtain resources

The topology used in this experiment is the same as the one used in the OpenFlow using OVS part of this tutorial: Three virtual machines (VMs) connected by an OpenFlow switch. However this tutorial uses the hardware OpenFlow switch on the rack instead of a software OVS switch.

About GENI OpenFlow switches
GENI offers access to hardware OpenFlow switches. Each OpenFlow switch, in most cases, can support only one controller. There are two ways of slicing the controller flowspace:

By VLAN id. This is used when each slice has its own VLANs.

By IP addresses or by Ethernet type. This is used when multiple slices share the same VLAN. For example, the Mesoscale VLAN 1750 that has been set up as a shared VLAN on all GENI racks.

Both approaches to slicing are covered in this tutorial.

To force the links between the VMs to go through the rack OpenFlow switch, the three VMs must be on separate physical hosts on the rack. Our experiment will:

Bind the Xen VMs to different physical hosts.

1.1 Find your RSPecs

The RSpecs for this tutorial are site specific. If you are attending a tutorial, use the site and IP network that was given to you on your worksheet. If you are doing this at home, choose a site from : clemson, cornell, gatech, gpo, illinois, kansas, uky, kettering, max, missouri, northwestern, nysernet, nyu, sox, stanford, wisconsin.

In the URLs below, replace <AGGREGATE-NAME> with the name of the site you are using (clemson, cornell, kansas, uky, kettering, max, northwestern, nysernet, stanford or wisconsin).

The format after for and -> is <MAC>.<PORT> so this way you know which port is connected to which host. To figure out the name for each port then it is simply A<PORT> so if host 1 is out of port 8, then the name is A8.

Configuration files of controllers

For the proxy and the port_forwarding controllers you will need to modify the config files (port_forward.config, proxy.config) to use the appropriate IP dataplane IP addresses of your hosts to correctly configure your controllers.